


Let me turn into ashes

by Cloudyjongho



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Death, Happy Ending, Johnny is death, M/M, and Jaehyun dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:35:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29612979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cloudyjongho/pseuds/Cloudyjongho
Summary: Johnny is the death, and Jaehyun dies.
Relationships: Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	Let me turn into ashes

Jaehyun sat on the floor of his apartment, head hanging low and limbs relaxed, weak.

The apartment was dark and empty — cold and unwelcoming. It was blurry in front of his eyes, the air tasting bitter, distasteful and bland on his tongue.

His head spun, the air in the apartment felt somehow so tensed and ominous as if the oxygen had disappeared, making Jaehyun's lungs fill and empty slowly and weakly, the tiniest bit of air still keeping him somehow up.

Jaehyun's head hurt. It ached and throbbed, like someone hit it with a rubber hammer, continuously destroying the skull and causing more pain. He had gotten used to the excruciating pain, it was fine.

Lights flickered from the windows, Seoul's nightlife bustling and very much awake at that hour. If Jaehyun had been any more alert, he would've heard the clock strike three in the morning. He wasn't.

Everything was hazy. Jaehyun's body rocked back and forth with his puffs for air, and his limbs tingled. He wasn't sure if he was losing the feeling on them or if he was just too tired.

But it was like his brains were filled up with cotton, each cloud-like soft layer adding to the buzzing in his head, closing the parts of his brains in a closet and locking it. Jaehyun felt like he was awake, but still asleep.

His eyes stayed closely on the wooden floor under him. If he could've gathered enough energy to move his eyes, he would’ve seen the wrinkled texture of his white button-up shirt or the slightly dirty black jeans — but all Jaehyun could do was to stare at the floor and hope. Hope that it was all a bad dream.

His insides twisted and it felt like his body was full of water, dangerous, deep and salty water from the beach not too far away from his grandmother's house. It felt like a storm was going on inside him. Like the waves tall enough to make a house break to millions of pieces of concrete were trying to torment him. Tear him apart. Hurt him. Fill his organs with salty water that _burned_ and _hurt_.

If his body was the sea, his mind was the fish.

His mind was trapped in the endless, angry sea, trying to stay alive and breathing. He was a tiny goldfish in the giant ocean.

Jaehyun blinked slowly. Someone's headlights hit his apartment's white wall, and he inhaled once again, throat sore and raspy. The air went in, made his chest rise, fall and escape him. It all hurt. Each expanse of his lungs was enough to make Jaehyun want to scream. But the scream never came out.

His fingers were white and nails purple, shaking as they rested on his lap. Jaehyun's usually good posture was nowhere seen, as he now sat on the floor, legs straight in front of him in an 90 degree angle as if he was stretching, and back so curved, that it could've snapped.

It was like he was frozen in that position, no matter how much Jaehyun wanted to use the muscles he had worked so hard for.

He blinked slowly, mouth slightly ajar. The pain in his head grew. The dullness in his mind began to take over even more. The sea inside his body grew more restless.

A shock of something went through his body, the pain flaring up and burning his nerves. But not even that was enough to break Jaehyun's frozen state.

The air inside the apartment got colder and colder. The tingling in his limbs was slowly dissipating, turning into a painful numbness.

Every breath he took began to get weaker. It seemed like the air was running out of his apartment, or his lungs were just giving up. Jaehyun wished he could've fought for the air, inhaled more, but from his slumped position on the floor, he could only feel how slowly, torturously slowly each raspy inhale grew smaller and weaker. Less and less air entered his lungs.

Jaehyun's eyesight was blurry. He couldn't see anything well anymore, and the throbbing in his head increased.

Each throb was stronger than the last one. Like the rubber hammer changed to a normal one, to three normal ones. Two of them tried to get through his skull on both of his temples, another one hitting him to the back of his neck. It was painful, _so_ _painful_.

Jaehyun would've screamed and cried if he could've. But he could do nothing but feel the torturous pain, get through it.

Nothing was going through his mind anymore. Not even the smallest thought. It was all empty, all dull and full of cotton. Nothing mattered, it was just him and the pain, walking hand to hand.

Jaehyun's whole body felt stiff from the cold. His fingers that had still been slightly curved a few minutes ago were now completely straight. He blinked slowly, eyes drooping.

A shadow appeared. It started playing on the floor of Jaehyun's apartment, changing forms and shapes. He stared at it, as if there was anything else he could've done.

If Jaehyun had been his own self, he would've started questioning just why and how was there a shadow, if he was the only one in the dark apartment. But now, he could only stare.

The shadow was still quite light and weak. But it didn't go away. One second it was a cat, the next it had changed into a cloud. In a while it turned into a round mass of something. Of darkness.

But the shadow darkened. It got wilder. It started jumping and dancing, bending to different ways and reaching to spaces. It rolled on Jaehyun's thigh, but he felt nothing.

Suddenly, it changed again, this time resembling a hand. The said hand came closer and grabbed Jaehyun's chin, and tilted it up.

Jaehyun's neck worked under the shadow's touch, and he looked up now. But he was still frozen.

The shadow's form changed into an angel — a halo, and a pair of wings. It flew around, its form strictly on the wall. Until a pair of horns appeared. It was now a lot darker. Stronger.

The next moment Jaehyun saw a child. A happy, young boy, and if his ears weren't betraying them, heard laughter.

The boy that reflected on the wall kicked a football, and ran, hair flying around in the wind, mouth split in to a wide grin as he laughed.

The boy began to get bigger.

It went from that young boy to a bigger boy, who sat in front of a TV and played. Then it changed again, this time to an even bigger boy, who sat in front of a table and studied. And lastly, it turned into a man who sat on a couch alone, head in his hands.

It was Jaehyun.

The shadow changed one more time. It was him, Jaehyun, on the floor, sitting and crying, like he had done thirty minutes ago. Before his body had turned into something as horrifying as it now was. Before he air had turned cold and ashy.

Then the shadow stepped out of the wall, and began to darken. Jaehyun saw features.

A tall, beautiful man with black hair, pointy chin and dark eyes, who looked so lively and so real, but at the same time so see-through and unreal.

Jaehyun just stared. The man stepped closer, running a hand through his hair and looking to the side for a second, before staring down at Jaehyun.

Everything else was blurry but the man. He saw the man clearly, but he still couldn't decide whether he was real or a shadow. Jaehyun blinked.

When the man squatted down, it was like something snapped inside Jaehyun.

The sea turned murderous. The hammers were replaced with wrecking balls. His lungs gave up.

Powerful shocks of electricity began to burn off his nerves again. While trying to live with the small, tiny amount of air he got, the pain got so strong that Jaehyun wanted to _die_.

The man stared at him, and tilted his head. Jaehyun begged for help. It hurt him so much. His eyes screamed for something to ease the pain, to calm the storm inside him and to keep the fish, his mind, from dying.

But the man just watched him suffer, watched him _die._

Jaehyun thought the pain wouldn't end at all. He thought he'd need to suffer from it for the rest of his live, until he could no longer feel. Oh, how he wished he could _rip his head off_ so the wrecking balls couldn't _destroy_ him anymore.

That's when the man reached out, and touched Jaehyun's cheek.

The storm leveled up again. It was now a hurricane inside Jaehyun, throwing the poor fish around. A shock so strong went through his body once again, that Jaehyun's eyes blurred completely for a second.

He screamed on the inside. He screamed as loud as he could, vocal chords going raw and bleeding.

A hit of the wrecking ball came at the same time as the man touched Jaehyun's cheek again, and that was enough.

His skull broke. A shock finally burned off his nerves. The hurricane killed the fish.

Every single ounce of pain disappeared. Jaehyun's lungs filled up to the brim again, his chest puffing out, gasping for air.

Now he melted from the frozen state, and fell limply to the floor.

The man was there to catch him, though. He grabbed Jaehyun's waist before he could hit the floor, and in a second, Jaehyun was standing.

He wasn't weak anymore. He felt strong, he felt good, for the first time years. In a decade.

The man looked him into his eyes and smiled.

Jaehyun stared back, first not uttering a word or moving a muscle.

Then,

"Johnny." He whispered.

Jaehyun had never seen the man. But the name had born on his tongue, and it had been forced out.

"Jaehyun." Johnny whispered back.

He was pulled into a hug, Johnny's figure pushing against Jaehyun's own. Johnny's arms were around him, hugging him tight, his warmth melting Jaehyun. And finally, Jaehyun allowed himself to move, and to hug Johnny back.

He closed his eyes. Everything felt so calm, so good for him.

"Let's go." Johnny whispered again, and finally, darkness engulfed Jaehyun.

His skin blended into the darkness like Johnny's — he wasn't real anymore.

Jaehyun had turned into a shadow.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> I felt like writing something dark and short, so here’s what I came up with, in an hour. I hope you liked it❤️
> 
> [my twitter](https://twitter.com/cloudyjjongie?s=21) and [my curiouscat](https://curiouscat.qa/Cloudyjongho)


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